For more information on the World of Wellness Health Education series, please visit the Web site, www.WOWHealth.org.

Meet the Challenge of Comprehensive Health Education in Elementary School

Human Kinetics recognizes that health education may be challenging to fit into your busy schedule. That is why we developed the World of Wellness Health Education series (WOW!):

With WOW! you can deliver top-quality health education within the limited hours of the school day, promote health literacy, meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind legislation, and enhance your efforts to achieve the objectives of the overall curriculum that you work so hard to implement.

WOW! is designed to develop strong and compelling links between what students should know and what they should be able to do in the areas of reading and writing.

Finally—but no less importantly—WOW! emphasizes the importance of physical activity and nutrition throughout the health education strands.

Through careful design and execution, a coordinated approach, and consideration for real students and teachers in real school settings, WOW! not only helps you meet the challenge, but does so in a way that appeals to kids of all ages.

Fun. Easy. Complete.

The World of Wellness Health Education series enables you to teach your students the importance of leading an active and healthy life through conceptually grounded, context-based lessons. What’s even more exciting is that while your students are learning, they’ll become acquainted with a very special group of friends who will take them on a wellness journey throughout the school year. Ruby, Cody, T.J., Sydney, and others will help your students learn about health while strengthening their abilities in reading, writing, and other cross-curricular topics.

WOW! functions as a group of kits—without the cost of a kit! Ancillaries other publishers might make you pay extra for are included with the teacher’s guides for each level of the WOW! series at a very affordable price. Plus, few supplies are need for delivering the dynamic lessons found in WOW!, and the few little things you might need for activities or demonstrations are inexpensive and easily found in a school or discount store. That means that you can deliver WOW! content expertly, smoothly, and affordably with very little prep time!

Coordinated School Health Connections

Today’s child needs an updated, multifaceted approach in order to achieve health literacy, or the ability to make choices that will enhance personal health and well-being now and in the future. For many years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have promoted the key to children’s health and well-being through their Coordinated School Health Model. This model encompasses eight interactive areas:

Health education

Physical education

Health services

Nutrition services

Counseling, psychological, and social services

Healthy school environment

Health promotion for staff

Family and community involvement

WOW! Delivers Coordinated School Health

With concern rapidly growing about childhood obesity, inactivity, and other health risks such as type 2 diabetes, states and municipalities are now responding by passing laws requiring coordinated school health. The WOW! Health Education series meets these needs by providing the four components that are most frequently required:

Health education core content meeting the relevant national standards

Physical education helping students meet the national standards

Parent involvement newsletters provided per unit and per grade level, in both English and Spanish

Nutrition education and services for students and parents alike.

Professional development opportunities are available through the authors to support each essential component.

This Is How WOW! Works

Each level of The World of Wellness Health Education series consists of the following:

a teacher’s guide

a teacher’s resource CD-ROM

a student book that corresponds to the students’ levels

For kindergarten students, the student book is a big book, a large colorful book for the teacher to read to the group; first- through fifth-grade students have their own books. In addition, an abridged first-grade student book is available in big book format.

Color Coding

Across the series, kindergarten through fifth grade, WOW! uses a color-coded system to denote grade levels. This allows you the additional flexibility of using a lower level to meet the needs of students with academic challenges or a higher level to challenge gifted students.

In today’s world of tight budgets and increasing demands on school resources, rest assured that the WOW! student books are not intended to be used as workbooks. Rather, they are meant to last multiple years while still being cost-effective. This complies with the directives of most school districts not to purchase student consumables.

For more information, including sample pages of the student text, teacher`s guide, and included reproducibles, visit the WOW Health Education series Web site at www.WOWHealth.org.

Bonnie Nygard, MEd, is an associate dean of academic affairs for the Community and Technical College at the University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA). Before she held this position, Bonnie was a faculty member and coordinator of the physical education and recreation department at UAA for more than 15 years. Bonnie's undergraduate degree is in physical education (K–12), and she earned her master's degree in adult education, with an emphasis in exercise science, from the University of Alaska at Anchorage. She is the coauthor of the Innovative Fitness Connections secondary physical fitness curriculum and resource package, The Ultimate Guide of One-Minute Workouts, Making the Fitness Connection, and When Cody Became a Mouse Potato, the first children's book sponsored by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Tammy Green, MPH, is assistant professor and director of the Allied Health Science division at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. Tammy was recently invited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) to speak at their annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) conference. Under Tammy's guidance, Alaska became the first state to collect statewide weighted YRBS data using active parental consent. Previously Tammy was a health education specialist with the State of Alaska, Section of Epidemiology, managing the State Obesity Prevention and Control program. Tammy received her undergraduate degree in health and physical education from the University of Northern Colorado and her master's of public health (MPH), with an emphasis in health education and promotion, from Loma Linda University in southern California. Tammy has worked for the Alaska Department of Health as the school health program manager, a position in which she has collaborated with the Alaska Department of Education to increase coordinated school health programs throughout the state to deliver services and training to school districts and teachers.

Susan Koonce, MEd, has more than 20 years of teaching experience ranging from preschool to adult education. Her primary teaching emphasis is in working with elementary children with learning disabilities. Sue earned her undergraduate degree in special education from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and has a master's degree in special education from the University of Alaska at Anchorage. Sue is currently a special education teacher in the Anchorage School District. She is the coauthor of When Cody Became a Mouse Potato, the first children's book sponsored by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Professional Development

The authors of the WOW! Health Education series are available to provide dynamic, hands-on professional development for elementary classroom teachers, physical educations, and health education teachers on implementing the WOW! program, as well as other related issues. For more information or to schedule professional development for your school, contact the authors at (907) 233-8110 or e-mail jtigreen@gci.net.